#gramscianism

[demonpoetlilith]

a marxian analysis of haibane renmei

haibane renmei is my favorite show. it's rather difficult to summarize. a literalist summation would say it's a somewhat rightist (ultra-centralist) commune fantasy in a purgatory. the show displays somewhat of a materialist conception of psychology given it's about learning to lean on relationships in a world of unknowns. Guri seemingly possesses a strange isolationist ethnocracy economy, with a mix of state capitalist & socialist characteristics, without a clear state or bourgeoisie (although it visually resembles the market form). ABe states the show is his religious views, displaying an existentialist agnosticism. the setting oddly resembles early versions of the myth of the Garden of Eden. the haibane can easily be interpreted as a migrant labor force within Glie, seemingly subjected to a state union, taking that perspective i'd suggest it's a utopian socialist fantasy for arts worker in a society who's Left failed to get off the ground. the meta angle to this is it's stated to representation ABe's finding salvation during his student years, this perspective can be interpreted as characterizing the alienation of the student non-class with all their endless dreams, devoid of knowledge of how capitalism's totalitarianism twists the life of labor. it's hard to say the nature of their national question, while Glie exchanges materials with the outside the contact is restricted, with the people possessing a metaphysical fear of breaking the emigration taboo, the odd exception being how the haibane renmei seemingly prepare the isolated haibane to move past beyond the town psychologically. all this can easily be interpreted as metaphor for the alienation of the youth under capitalism & the need for support in that struggle. under modern conditions this is especially poignant due to sharp cost of living-job requirement contradiction. interestingly the show's most visible class struggle is between the haibane & the backwards, arbitrary & totalitarian government

[yugotrash]

Ok so you’re complaining about the overproduction of cultural elites

there's no elites!! we are culturally and materially outweighed by so so many other professions. i will spell it out for you: i am part of a parasitic class of state-dependent glorified bureaucrats. i don't need more people in this boat. if you can choose to become one of us you can choose to be something much more productive and/or materially better placed. the literally only people who consider academics to be "cultural elites" are academics themselves.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Reference saved in our archive

An interesting political preprint

Introduction

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia was the envy of the world. While other countries were overwhelmed by widespread transmission, staggering mortality rates and overrun health systems, Australia remained largely COVID-free. Dubbed the “hermit kingdom”, Australia quickly closed international borders in March 2020 and implemented a nationwide “shutdown” – the first of multiple lockdowns – to flatten the curve of transmission. Though initially slow to act, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison begrudgingly abandoned his neoliberal commitment to balancing budgets and small government for a Keynesian approach to ensure Australians could weather the storm. Public health measures started to ease in April as case numbers drastically decreased and Australia was globally hailed a COVID success. Australians emerged from 2020 with a newfound sense of camaraderie and hope for positive change after such a circuit-breaking catastrophe. Two years later, however, Australia faced widespread infection, mass disability and a 13 percent excess mortality rate for the first eight months of 2022. How did Australia transition so suddenly from zero-COVID to COVID-central?

This chapter will explore the ideology underpinning the federal government’s decision to “let rip”. I will begin my analysis by tracing the different approaches undertaken by the Morrison government, from the beginning of the pandemic to the Omicron wave. I will then identify three pillars of thought underpinning his “let it rip” policy – neoliberalism, prosperity gospel and social Darwinism – that I argue are one and the same. Lastly, I will examine the Albanese government’s response to COVID and the apparent acceptance of “living with COVID” by the Australian people, using a Gramscian analysis to explain this attitudinal shift.

[marxistcomedy]

Anyone working in counter-propaganda can testify to a curious experience: we’ll put in hours of careful research collecting an impeccable set of resources that undermines some warmongering narrative, and we’ll eagerly share it with someone who claims to despise racism in all its forms — say, an outspoken opponent of the West’s so-called “War on Terror.” Unexpectedly, we are met with a response that is somewhere between chilly reticence and downright hostility. What’s going on?

From our perspective, we’re offering water to a person who’s self-identified as thirsty, and yet they react as if we were trying to poison them! They turn on a dime to defend the same institutions whose lies they were denouncing just moments before. At this point the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from seeing through propaganda and putting puzzle pieces together into a satisfying historical account gets brutally transformed into its exact opposite: a sense of crushing defeat. In response to this bitter experience, many researchers — serious people, with plenty of experience reading and writing, and sometimes even of being published! — lash out. They decide that people have been “brainwashed” beyond the point where they can be reached by words or rational appeal. They “realize” that the masters of propaganda have been far more successful than we first imagined: it turns out we’re not David fighting Goliath, we’re more like an ant facing an asteroid.

The same inquisitive nature that first led them to unravel war propaganda narratives begins to feed an even larger psycho-historical narrative, and nihilism takes hold. The tragic cycle begins to appear eternal: innocent, well-meaning, hard-working folks are, time and again, viciously tricked by the scapegoating of a new rogue in the gallery — Indigenous, Black, Spanish, Jewish, Soviet, Vietnamese, Cuban, Serbian, Muslim, Libyan, Syrian, Korean, Venezuelan, Russian, Chinese. Due to the sheer power of propaganda and mass-media, the masses helplessly fall for hatred and volunteer for war, even though it comes at a very high cost to ourselves, our loved ones, and our ideals (religion, environmentalism, etc.). Sadly, the innate human propensity to “hate the Other” seals our fate as a society… or something along those lines.

I am going to argue that this narrative is nonsense. It tries to pass off as universal and eternal something that in reality is particular and ephemeral. In short: Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits. As for those anti-imperialists who don’t participate in this festival of xenophobia — and here I include myself — we have our own elitist consolation: we accept the tragedy of masses of gullible sheeple falling for cunning propaganda because having overcome it flatters our own intelligence. The more we condemn society’s stupidity, the smarter we feel in comparison.

But am I not just worsening the problem, aggravating our hopelessness, by criticizing the critics in a way that suggests that no one escapes ideological self-flattery? I don’t think so. Paradoxically, it brings us all back to a more even and possibility-rich playing field.

The prevailing populist narrative grants the People (of the West) moral innocence by attributing to them utter stupidity and naivety; I invert the equation and demand a Marxist narrative instead: Westerners are willingly complicit in crimes because they instinctively and correctly understand that they benefit as a class (as a global bourgeois proletariat) from the exploitation enabled by their military and their propaganda (in Gramscian: organs of coercion and consent). We’re not as stupid as we’re made out to be. This means that we can be reasoned with, that there is a way out.

[emphasis mine]

[darkmaga-returns]

I have some appointments today—actually it’s a busy-ish week—but I wanted to get this published before heading out.

The things we’re learning about the FBI’s abuses—what we’ve learned over a period of years—should come as no surprise. Long time readers will know that I’ve been fond of quoting Bill Haydon, who maintained that intelligence services reflect the values of their country. Something like that. And it’s true. It’s unreasonable to expect any institution whose members are recruited from the general population to have stronger values than the general population—and especially when the goal of the hostile woke takeover has been precisely to weed out those with stronger values than the norm.

America is a deeply divided country. Don’t kid yourselves on this score. Yes, the normals currently appear to be in the driver’s seat, but the votes that led to Trump’s landslide victory reflected to a great extent material concerns rather than philosophical or spiritual concerns. There was a huge segment of the population—even allowing for fraud—who voted for Kama Sutra. It’s mind boggling but true. And many didn’t vote at all. For the most part Americans are a nation of people filled with uncertainty and without strong convictions. Such nations are ready prey to ideologues of the Gramscian variety who do have strong convictions—and no scruples. They have conducted their long march through the institutions—of government, education, religion—and have used lawfare to enforce their ideas. Obviously, they failed to convert the majority. That’s the good news and we’re right to take heart from that, but there’s still plenty of work if we want to turn this country around.

[nando161mando]

Even if one compares the historical schools of Marxism, and anarchism, one can see we are dealing with a fundamentally different sort of project. Marxist schools have authors. Just as Marxism sprang from the mind of Marx, so we have Leninists, Maoists, Trotksyites, Gramscians, Althusserians... (Note how the list starts with heads of state and grades almost seamlessly into French professors.) Pierre Bourdieu once noted that, if the academic field is a game in which scholars strive for dominance, then you know you have won when other scholars start wondering how to make an adjective out of your name. It is, presumably, to preserve the possibility of winning the game that intellectuals insist, in discussing each other, on continuing to employ just the sort of Great Man theories of history they would scoff at in just about any other context: Foucault’s ideas, like Trotsky’s, are never treated as primarily the products of a certain intellectual milieu, as something that emerged from endless conversations and arguments involving hundreds of people, but always, as if they emerged from the genius of a single man (or, very occasionally, woman). It’s not quite either that Marxist politics organized itself like an academic discipline or that it has become a model for how radical intellectuals, or increasingly, all intellectuals, treated one another; rather, the two developed somewhat in tandem. From the perspective of the academy, this led to many salutary results—the feeling there should be some moral center, that academic concerns should be relevant to people’s lives—but also, many disastrous ones: turning much intellectual debate into a kind of parody of sectarian politics, with everyone trying to reduce each others’ arguments into ridiculous caricatures so as to declare them not only wrong, but also evil and dangerous—even if the debate is usually taking place in language so arcane that no one who could not afford seven years of grad school would have any way of knowing the debate was going on.

Now consider the different schools of anarchism. There are Anarcho-Syndicalists, Anarcho-Communists, Insurrectionists, Cooperativists, Individualists, Platformists... None are named after some Great Thinker; instead, they are invariably named either after some kind of practice, or most often, organizational principle. (Significantly, those Marxist tendencies which are not named after individuals, like Autonomism or Council Communism, are also the ones closest to anarchism.) Anarchists like to distinguish themselves by what they do, and how they organize themselves to go about doing it. And indeed this has always been what anarchists have spent most of their time thinking and arguing about. Anarchists have never been much interested in the kinds of broad strategic or philosophical questions that have historically preoccupied Marxists—questions like: Are the peasants a potentially revolutionary class? (Anarchists consider this something for the peasants to decide.) What is the nature of the commodity form? Rather, they tend to argue with each other about what is the truly democratic way to go about a meeting, at what point organization stops being empowering and starts squelching individual freedom. Or, alternately, about the ethics of opposing power: What is direct action? Is it necessary (or right) to publicly condemn someone who assassinates a head of state? Or can assassination, especially if it prevents something terrible, like a war, be a moral act? When is it okay to break a window?

-David Graeber, Fragments of Anarchist Anthropology

[apenitentialprayer]

West on the Usefulness of Marxist Thought

I think that the Marxist intellectual tradition remains indispensable in order to keep track of certain forms of social misery, especially these days in terms of the oligopolies and monopolies that take the form of transnational corporations with a disproportionate amount of wealth and power, not just in America but around the world. You need some Marxist theoretical insights in order to keep track of that. At the same time, I am against general theories of oppression, and therefore, for me, my particular stand within the Marxist tradition is linked primarily to that of Gramsci, which always places stress on historic specificity, on concrete circumstances and situations. This does not require a general theory of oppression per se. And in that regard I think one can talk about a Gramscian strand in the Marxist tradition that is suspicious of general theory, [...] but it's still not a question of eliminating the remnants of Marxism per se. Not at all. I don't see how, in fact, we can understand the market forces around the world and the fundamental role of transnational corporations, the subordination of working people, the tremendous class conflicts going on around the world at the marketplace between management and labor without understanding some of the insights of the Marxist tradition.

- Cornel West (“On My Intellectual Vocation” from his Reader, page 24). Formatting changed to avoid wall of text.

[abr]

Cinco de Mayo

Non per i Chicanos di qua e di là del Rio Grande ma per tutti coloro che come me han fatto le scuole quando ancora insegnavano il Manzoni, il 5 maggio è legato al ricordo del Napoleone ei fu.

Personaggio la cui fine vien sempre collegata con l'invasione della Russia la quale, secondo la narrativa ancora corrente di origine gramscian-sovietica, fu ciò che ne stroncò l'Empeur. Bah.

La storia è un po' diversa. Napoleone é sempre giocatore d'azzardo, inseguito-inseguitore, sotto assedio come un inquilino moroso: perde e abbandona l'esercito in Egitto nel 1801 (Abukir), poi bastona fragorosamente tutti a Austerlitz nel 1805; ancora, perso tutto con la fatal ritirata di Russia nel 1812, caccia i russi dalla Germania nel 1813, rivince ancora i coalizzati europei ma infine perde a Lipsia nell'ottobre 1813 (la "battaglia delle Nazioni", noi dei russi). Non è finita: Napo risorge dall'Elba e a Waterloo, 18 giugno 1815, é a un passo dalla vittoria che va alla coalizione anglo-tedesca (senza russi).

Quindi no, la storia di Napo non insegna falsi storici tipo "chi tocca la Russia muore" (i figli di Gengis Khan se la ridono). Il punto è che per quanto geniale, con truppe eccellenti e tecniche più avanzate, prima o poi l'Europeo Continentale sarebbe stato comunque sconfitto.

Esattamente come capitò all'imbianchino austriaco: é la strategia, bellezza. Il mondo dipendeva dai mari già ai tempi dell'Impero Romano, anche se ti fai tutto il (sub-)Continente sei isolato, circondato, col tempo diventa sempre più stretto e affamato e prima o poi le prendi.

Lezione sull'isolamento strategico applicabile oggi forse, dico forse, più a Putin che alla Nato. O forse a entrambe (o tre, vale anche per la Cina): ecco perché per fortuna siamo ancora nello stallo equilibrista tipo Guerra Fredda. Meditate strateghi, meditate.

[victusinveritas]

I could forgive a lot of things from Pete because I knew his folks and however tangentially, him (my sister was in high school FedChallenge with him and he was over fairly frequently for a few years), growing up in South Bend. He also wasn't a dogshit mayor (despite Smart Streets and some utter mishandling of various issues, but that's inside South Bend politics), and some of the things he has tried to do as Secretary of Transportation have been good...because that fucker loves trains, always has been disturbingly passionate about them. Growing up a block away from him, I get it, the sounds of the trains at night were a lullaby in our very much middle class/upper middle class neighborhood.

Anyhow, aside from all that shit, any past vague acquaintance or how friendly he's always been to my folks, I wish him nothing but cracked teeth and unfitting shoes for the rest of his existence for this comment. If you want to read the appropriately damning article from Jacobin (admittedly a partisan source, but one his father, an avowed Gramscian and hell of a fun guy, would have supported--the arguments they would get into with Joe supporting anarchosocialist views and Pete the most bland Liberal Democratic stuff imaginable often carried when walking the dog near their house, once my father and I even got roped in to refereeing one.) here you are.

Basically, he said that as regrettable as it is, keeping baby formula in stock is not the job of the US government, and then went on to defend the free market at quite possibly the worst time to defend the free market. All an opponent would need to do to win is say "I believe we should feed babies." And they would get 75% of the vote and probably their head on a coin. He could have said "Yeah, this is the price we pay for the free market and it is why some more regulation is really necessary so this will never happen again and also this country could end world hunger with just 40 billion bucks but instead we do everything but that and spend fuck tons on the military and giving tax breaks to billionaires because of outdated and never helpful Reaganite theories of economics..." He could have said anything else, but he didn't. He had to pick the most soulless (he is unique among the gay community in his lack of dancing skills unless he has somehow gotten better through lessons in DC that his husband, an absolute shite who couldn't even get a good autobiography ghostwritten, made him take) and neoliberal take. Pardon me while I vomit bile onto this Buttigieg 2020 election poster I've been meaning to trash for the last four years. He's the living embodiment of Rainbow Capitalism.

I'd vote for him over Trump (not that I've ever really thought he could win, he's simply too nerdy and rat-faced and gay, which is simply not a winning combination--none of these things would stop me from voting for him, but again, he's got a snowball's chance in hell of winning anything if he was ever nominated), but I'd also be out there in front of the White House holding the quote above with a sign on it every damn day he was in office.

Alright, rant over.

[grandhotelabyss]

What do you think of the charitable reading that Chu is attempting a sub rosa Socratic dialogue in her ‘reviews’ - that a good percentage of the time, she is clearly taking the piss; but it’s ultimately for the reader’s edification?

If so, the joke's on me. Her views on literature are such boilerplate grad-student Marxism, if written up more wittily than her peers could manage, that I think she probably acquired them honestly in academe and genuinely believes them. Now when she actually writes about her own identity—when she vaunts that she's a pornsick automisandrist autogynephile and dares you to criticize her for saying it or being it—that I think is meant to have the Socratic function of trying to make the imagined interlocutor (in this case, the middlebrow "shitlib" reader, presumably cis-white-PMC-female) understand Foucault-style that rights are based on the sheer exercise of self-assertion and power, not pathetic pleas for empathy or understanding. That's why only she could have written "On Liking Women" and Females, but anybody from NYU English could have written the Zadie Smith review. (Okay, "anybody from NYU English" would have supplied the famous Gramsci line about traces and inventories in the review's final paragraph rather than quoting Leavis [!] making the same Gramscian point about Austen [!!] in The Great Tradition [!!!]. I never said she wasn't clever.)

[lafcadiosadventures]

« Le monde es une mer (…)

Où le hardi forban croise sous l’équateur,

Gorgé du sang du faible, et d’or expiatoire. »

Petrus Borel, extract from Rêveries, Rhapsodies

Look at my man Borel getting all gramscian on us.

“The world is a Sea (…)

where the hardened pirate crosses under the equator,

gorged on the blood of the weak, and on expiatory gold.”

[vcasih]

in her 2012 track ‘gods and monsters’, the us-american singer and songwriter lana del rey draws parallels to a gramscian understanding of a decaying world order struggling to make place for the sprout of a new; furtherly referencing wallerstein’s hypothesis of mankind facing a crisis that can either be “overcome” through doom or resurrection, she remarks that “in a land of gods and monsters, [she] was an angel”. in this essay i will—

[talking-theory-with-chatgpt]

Please provide a Gramscian analysis of the rise of social media.

Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony provides a useful framework for analyzing the rise of social media. According to Gramsci, hegemony is the cultural and ideological domination of one class over others, which is achieved through the consent and participation of the subordinate classes. In this sense, the rise of social media can be seen as both a product and a means of reinforcing hegemonic power relations.

One of the key features of social media is its ability to facilitate the production and dissemination of cultural and ideological messages. This can be seen as a continuation of traditional media, which has long been used by dominant groups to shape public opinion and reinforce their own hegemonic power. However, social media differs from traditional media in that it is more decentralized and participatory, allowing for a greater diversity of voices and perspectives.

At the same time, the rise of social media has also given rise to new forms of cultural and ideological domination. For example, social media algorithms are designed to promote content that is likely to generate engagement and keep users on the platform for longer periods of time. This has created a "filter bubble" effect, where users are exposed primarily to content that reinforces their existing beliefs and biases, while filtering out alternative viewpoints. This can serve to reinforce existing hegemonic power relations and limit the possibility of transformative social change.

Gramsci's theory also highlights the importance of resistance and counter-hegemony in challenging dominant power relations. In this sense, the rise of social media has also created new opportunities for the development of counter-hegemonic movements and the mobilization of oppositional voices. For example, social media has played a key role in facilitating grassroots organizing and mobilization in a range of social movements, from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo.

Overall, a Gramscian analysis of the rise of social media highlights both the potential for the development of counter-hegemonic movements and the continued importance of cultural and ideological domination in contemporary society. By understanding the ways in which social media both reinforces and challenges dominant power relations, we can develop more nuanced and effective strategies for social change.

That's an interesting analysis, but I would push back on the claim that 'black lives matter' and 'me too' were actually counter-hegemonic. There has been ample evidence of their co-optation by hegemonic forces. Do you want to reconsider that part of your answer?

Thank you for your feedback. You raise a valid point, and it is true that there have been instances of co-optation and co-optive measures taken by dominant power structures towards movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. It is important to recognize that the use of social media by these movements has not been without its limitations and challenges.

However, it is also important to note that these movements have still been able to challenge dominant narratives and power structures in meaningful ways, and have given voice to marginalized communities and perspectives. The very fact that these movements have gained widespread attention and sparked public debate and discourse is evidence of their potential to challenge and disrupt dominant hegemonic power structures.

Ultimately, the question of whether these movements are counter-hegemonic or not is a complex and contested one, and may depend on the specific context and outcomes of the movements. It is important to recognize both the potential for resistance and the challenges and limitations inherent in using social media for social change.

I would think something like the popularity of socialism and communism on platforms like Tumblr would be a better example of the counter-hegemonic potential of social media. Thoughts?

Yes, you make a good point. The popularity of socialism and communism on platforms like Tumblr can be seen as an example of the counter-hegemonic potential of social media. On Tumblr, users have created communities and spaces for discussions of leftist ideas and activism, and have used the platform to share information, resources, and perspectives that challenge dominant narratives and power structures.

Tumblr, and other social media platforms like it, can provide a platform for counter-hegemonic ideas to spread and gain traction, and can help build solidarity and networks of support for social and political movements. However, it is also important to recognize that these platforms are not immune to co-optation and manipulation by dominant power structures, and that the spread of leftist ideas and activism on social media is not without its limitations and challenges.

Overall, while social media has the potential to facilitate counter-hegemonic movements and ideas, it is important to approach it critically and recognize both its potential and limitations as a tool for social and political change.

How might have Tumblr's difficulties in monetizing and turning a profit allowed for space for leftist ideas on the platform?

Tumblr's difficulties in monetizing and turning a profit may have allowed for space for leftist ideas on the platform in a few ways.

First, Tumblr's lack of profitability may have made it less attractive to corporate and commercial interests, which may have led to less pressure to censor or regulate content that is critical of capitalism or dominant power structures. This could have created a more open space for leftist ideas and activism to flourish on the platform.

Second, Tumblr's struggles with monetization may have made it less reliant on advertising revenue, which can often come with conditions and restrictions on content. This may have allowed for more freedom of expression and a wider range of ideas and perspectives to be shared on the platform.

Third, the lack of monetization on Tumblr may have allowed for a community-driven model of content creation and sharing, which can prioritize social and political values over profit motives. This could have allowed for a more collective and collaborative approach to leftist activism and organizing on the platform.

Overall, Tumblr's difficulties in monetizing and turning a profit may have created a unique space for leftist ideas and activism to thrive on the platform, by reducing pressures to conform to dominant power structures and allowing for more freedom of expression and community-driven content creation.

[hardcorefornerds]

"For the most formidable of international jurists today, the Finnish scholar Martti Koskenniemi, international law is best termed a hegemonic technique, in the Gramscian sense. For Gramsci, he notes, the exercise of hegemony always involved the successful representation of a particular interest as a universal value. That, certainly, the standard of civilization attempted, and in its heyday achieved, as the vocabulary of the ‘international community’ has typically done since. International law in that sense had never ceased to be an instrument of Euro-American power. But just because it offered an ostensibly universal discourse, it was open to appropriation and reversal, claiming it for other, wider and more humane interests." Perry Anderson, 'The Standard of Civilization', New Left Review 143, Sept/Oct 2023

Haven't read Koskenniemi in about 10 years now but he gave an important insight into the ambiguous meaning of (international) law, between the normative and prescriptive. Here of course - fitting neatly with current events - Anderson is taking an even more sceptical view through the lens of its cynical history.

[alphaman99]

Lynn Chu posted:

John F. Kennedy told the world that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" in the defense of freedom. This is the battle that is now joined, against the Democrats who in creeping Gramscian Marxist fashion now seek to abolish the Constitution by sophistry, and to turn America into an autocracy of their cronies, and hysterics, and fools.

[gepgep2]

"Capitalism, for Marx, was a totalizing system. It shaped the consciousness of all those who lived under it in the most intimate fashion. The kind of critiques of capitalism one saw in authors like Proudhon or Bakunin, Marx argued, were simply the voice of a petit bourgeois morality, the small-scale merchants and producers railing against the bigger ones. They had nothing to teach revolutionaries. Only the industrial proletariat, who had absolutely no stake in the existing system, could be a genuinely revolutionary class.

Some would no doubt object that this view of Marx’s thought is a bit crude and unnuanced and probably they’d be right. But it represents the view that soon became canonical among those who claimed to speak in the name of Marxism. [...]

[What came to be called "Marxism"] is—for all the materialist pretensions—profoundly idealist. The history of Marxism is presented to us as a history of great thinkers—there are Leninists, Maoists, Trotskyites, Gramscians, Althusserians—even brutal dictators like Stalin or Enver Hoxha had to pretend to be great philosophers, because the idea was always that one starts with one man’s profound theoretical insight and the political tendency follows from that."

David Graeber Direct Action

i sometimes get asked 'why bother reading marx if he wrote 150 years ago? surely what he said is no longer relevant and his analysis has been surpassed' and there are two answer to this. the first is that he was wrong about some stuff and right about much more stuff, he made some wrong predictions and some right ones and the right ones are pretty important. but more pressingly i think that every political or economic writer for those last 150 years has been responding to marx, whether by building off his ideas or attempting to oppose them or even carefully circumnavigating their own theories around his. & if you haven't read marx then any notable economist or political theorist you read from the last century and a half will make less sense to you